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Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



A.N.S. - R.I.P.

Essay Posted February 13, 2007 by James E. Nelson

I have always felt sorry for Anna Nichol Smith. The gossip professionals implied that she was dumb as a stump and nothing she ever did indicated otherwise. She also had a southern trailer trash upbringing that simply added to the inane extravaganza. She had no manners, no sense of decorum, no inner compass to guide her through life, and no common sense to help her make decisions. Even her charity work looked just a bit ridiculous. As Bill Bonner observed, “[W]hat a story! Sex. Money. Fame. Weight problems. A walking, talking, breathing public spectacle.”

Hollywood is not known for it’s collective intelligence quotient. It does have a number of thoughtful people; there are even a handful of truly intelligent folks. But mostly it is made up of people who, since their wee youth, have been able to get by on their good looks, charm, or both. As a result their brains have atrophied. Since virtually no one works (in any traditional sense of the word) there is also very little responsible behavior. As a result their common sense has atrophied as well. To paraphrase Bonner, Hollywood itself is a walking, talking, breathing public spectacle.

But the evidence indicates that Anna Nichol Smith was in a category nearly all by herself. It was dumb luck and beautiful genes (along with some strategic surgery) that got her to where she was. Once famous and rich, she was used, abused, ridiculed, and monetized by the whole entertainment industry. She always had the outward appearance of someone who simply didn’t care what others thought, but behind those eyes was what appeared to me to be a haunted, frightened, and confused woman caught up in a maelstrom that was completely beyond her control.

In short, Smith embodied the dehumanized (and as a result, mean spirited) type of entertainment that Hollywood has become. Her life was a circus through which the media made millions, and her death has been more of the same. There is little public mourning nor sorrow; instead the circus continues and the industry barkers call out with a bit more excitement as the “public spectacle” takes a new and spectacular turn—Anna Nichol’s estate!

A few years ago I would have shuddered and proclaimed that the world is devolving, going to hell in a hand basket! I probably would have wished I was still a Dispensationalist because then I could look forward to all of this coming to a wonderfully catastrophic end in horrible judgment while I was blissfully looking on from the outside in heaven.

But in the last couple of years I have had a heavy dose of the Lives of the Saints of the last two thousand years as the stories of their lives are retold in church Sunday after Sunday. And with this newfound but ancient wisdom I recognize that things are certainly no worse now than they ever were. Every generation has its Babylon and every Babylon its Anna Nichol Smiths. Many of those ancient “Anna Nichols” encountered Christ and have become both famous and beloved in the Church. Many of those saints went on to live lives probably every bit as weird as their former sinful lives, but in service of God rather than service of self. Mary of Egypt is probably the most revered “Anna Nichol” in history. After an early life lived in pursuit of pleasure and debauchery, she encountered Christ, vowed to serve him, and moved to the desert, completely disappearing from the public radar until her rather remarkable death.

Of course that never happened to Anna Nichol Smith. She was a silly and deeply disturbed woman to the very end. It is not my intention to let her off the hook; we are ultimately responsible for the lives we live and the choices we make. But that being said, there is a very real sense that Smith had lost control of her life and destiny. She was in very deep water that her upbringing and native intelligence simply could not navigate. Circumstances took control of her life and never let go. Even if she had wanted to change her life, it was not in her hands to change. She was simply along for the ride as various others took the wheel and dipped into the purse.

But in the end, it is the responsibility of the Christian to affirm that she was human and then give her the dignity that this affirmation implies. When we fall into the trap of getting caught up in the circus that was her life and is her death, when we merely laugh at her antics and seeming stupidity, when we smirk at the chaos created by those chasing her fortune . . .

. . . When we fail to mourn for (and merely laugh at) a lost soul who was adrift in the seemingly endless and wild sea of life, we diminish the image of God and mock the power of sin. We diminish her potential and we diminish, in a sense, our own humanity.

Pope John Paul II was loudly insistent in his critique of “the culture of death” that has benighted the modern world. When we think of his call to honor all life and reject this culture of death, we generally think of his critique of the modern military industrial complex and the obscene immorality of modern warfare, his absolute rejection of abortion and medical birth control, and his continued critique of both euthanasia and the death penalty. But the culture of death is not only manifest in killing (that is, how we die), it is also manifest in how we live. All the Babylons of history have been marked by the very “culture of death” that the past Pope railed against. And in her dehumanized life and circus-like death, Anna Nichol Smith is a sort of icon of the culture of death that we as Christians must battle.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me make it clear that it was not so much her death, but her life that embodied the culture of death. Smarter people than her took control and she largely became a slave of their monetary designs on her life. That removal of freedom is a facet of the culture of death. As all Hollywood women are, she was objectified, but with Anna Nichol, that objectification took a much more profound turn as her shallowness allowed the dumb blond persona to completely bury and suffocate the person underneath. That removal of personality is a facet of the culture of death. Finally, through her lifestyle—a lifestyle promoted by several of her advertising sponsors, because they are in the business of selling the passions of life—she became utterly consumed in her passions, so that she became her passions and in turn, those nearly all-powerful passions destroyed her. This is the most insidious facet of the culture of death. The passions are the cancer of sin, and when they are allowed to run wild, they cannibalize our very souls.

Anna Nichol Smith was so enslaved, objectified, and “impassioned” (if I may invent a word) that she became a caricature, a sort of cartoon, of a human. It was therefore easy to merely gawk and laugh as if she were a Pixar original. But some of Jesus’ greatest miracles were done with people in similar straights. Jesus was able to see beyond the caricature, so perceive the human behind the cartoon, to recognize God-created life within the shell of death and destruction. Anna Nichol may never have touched the hem of his garment, but that offer and that potential was always there.

Jesus Christ’s greatest gift to us was the gift of life. His second greatest gift was the ability to discern divine life that is part of the creation that he created good, and after discerning that divine life, blessing and honoring it. So it is incumbent upon us, as Christians, to especially honor her human dignity and mourn the victory of death over this poor lost soul. When we do, we do our part to tear down the very icons of the culture of death against which we are pitted.

Anna Nichol Smith, you did very little worthy of honor in your short and tempestuous life. But grace that is given because of our worthiness is not grace. God is not a just God (as humans count justice) but gracious and kind. So it is that we say, “May God have mercy on your soul.”